was
accomplished, it was by no means easy to get a shot. The squirrel leaped
from one tree to another as fast as his enemies below could run. Finally
he climbed to the top of a tall beech whose trunk he immediately put
between himself and the hunters. It became necessary first to see him,
second to get a shot at him, third to hit him, and last to bring him
down. Bobby, shooting the heavy barrelled Flobert at unaccustomed
ranges, and at an elusive mark, discovered the appetite of atmosphere
for lead. Nevertheless it was the most exciting, breathless, tingling
game he had ever played. The air was biting cold, especially after the
sun began to sink through the trees, but it had the effect merely of
nipping Bobby's nose and cheeks red--his little body was tingling and
aglow. On his banner day he brought down two fox-squirrels, and one of
the beautiful black squirrels, then not uncommon, but now practically
extinct. In the process he used up his box of cartridges.

XI

THE MARSHES

"Real fall weather," that season of 1879, seemed to delay long beyond
the appointed time. During each night, to be sure, it grew cold. The
leaves, after their blaze and riot of colour, turned crisp and crackly
and brown. Some of the little still puddles were filmed with what was
almost, but not quite, ice. A sheen of frost whitened the house-roofs
and silvered each separate blade of grass on the lawns. But by noon the
sun, rising red in the veil of smoke that hung low in the snappy air,
had mellowed the atmosphere until it lay on the cheek like a caress. No
breath of air stirred. Sounds came clearly from a distance. Long
V-shaped flights of geese swept athwart the sky very high up, but their
honking carried faintly to the ear. Time seemed to have run down. And
yet when the sun, swollen to the great dimensions of the rising moon,
dipped blood-red through the haze, the first faint premonitory tingle
of cold warned one that the tepid, grateful warmth of the day had been
but an illusion of a season that had gone. This was not summer; but, in
the quaint old phrase, Indian summer. And its end would be as though the
necromancer had waved his wand.

In the meantime the barges and schooners continued to take chances in
order to market the last of the year's lumber crop; the small boys and
squirrels made the most of the nut crop; the grouse remained scattered
in noisy cover; and the ducks frequented the open stretches where they
were quite out